A Brief Introduction to VBA

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 Overview
 The purpose of this presentation is to provide you with
a very brief introduction to VBA, a programming
language that is embedded within the Microsoft Office
suite of software products.

 The goals of this presentation are modest: they are to

get you started, to provide you with the basic tools and
background that you will need to be immediately able
to start working on your projects. This is not a
comprehensive guide to VBA – it is a very complex
language – rather, it is designed to teach you the
rudiments of the language.

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 Overview
In particular this presentation will :
 Show you how to record a macro and then edit it.

 Explain the differences between macros, functions and

subroutines.
 Discuss how to insert modules for functions and

subroutines, and how to enter functions and

subroutines.
 Discuss how the keys to program flow and control.

 Introduce you to two different types of loops.

 Discuss how to perform basic debugging operations.

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 Macros and VBA
 VBA is Visual Basic for Applications. It is a modified
version of Microsoft’s well-known Visual Basic language.
 Although many users treat VBA as nothing more than a
macro-language, in truth it can be much more. It allows:
 moderately complex programming,
 one to include in VBA programs some of the functions that are
built into Excel,
 it allows the user to read data from and write data into Excel,
 and it allows the user to create programs that can use various
components from the Microsoft suite of products.
 The key to realize is that VBA is a tool to use to
supplement Excel.

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 Macros and VBA
Most users of Excel are at least somewhat familiar to macros. We
will start with a simple Macro example, and then examine the
structure and code of the example to begin to gain insight into
VBA.
 To begin, open a new workbook in Excel

 Click on the Tools menu, and look toward the bottom. One of

your options will be “Macros”. Click on the Macro’s button.

 The second choice will be “Record New Macro”. Click on that

choice.
 You will then receive a pop-up window, asking you to name your

macro (the default will be something like Macro1). Type in

“Create_text”. Make sure that in the window where it says “Save
In”, that “This WorkBook” is selected.
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 Macros and VBA
 Click on “OK” to begin recording your Macro.
 The macro we are going to create we only want to do
something simple: Insert a few lines of text and today’s
date in a few specific places in the spreadsheet.
 To record this macro, all you have to do is demonstrate
to Excel what you want the macro to do.
 First, press the F5 key – this is the “goto” key. You will
then be prompted for which cell you wish to go to: enter
a1.
 You will be taken to cell A1. Enter the following text:
TITLE PAGE MACRO FOR FINN 6210.

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 Macros and VBA
 After typing in the line of text (and, of course, pressing
the “enter” key), press the F5 button again, this time tell
Excel to go to cell c15.
 Once you get to cell c15, enter “=today()”. This is a
function that simply puts today’s date in the cell.
 Now, let’s stop the macro recording. To do this click on
the little blue square in the macro popup box that is on
the screen.
 To demonstrate that the macro works, clear the entire
spreadsheet. To do this, press ctrl-A to highlight the
entire spreadsheet and then press the delete key.

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 Macros and VBA
 Now we can demonstrate that the macro works. Again
click on the “tools” menu and select “macro”.
 This time, however, select the first option “Macros”.
 This will bring up a list of all macros in the spreadsheet
(there will likely only be one, the one you just created
labeled “create_text”). Select “create_text”, and then
click on the RUN button. This will run your macro.

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 Macros and VBA
 We can now examine the macro. The macro is really just
a small subroutine written in VBA. To see the macro
text, just once again click on Tools, Macro, and then
click once on your macro name. Then click on the “Edit”
button.
 This will bring up a new item on your application bar –
the Microsoft Visual Basic Editor (we’ll show another way
of bringing this up later.)
 Your program should look something like this:

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 Macros and VBA
Sub create_text()
'
' create_text Macro
' Macro recorded 7/28/2003
'

'
Application.Goto Reference:="R1C1"
ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = “FINN 6210 Title Page"
Range("A2").Select
Application.Goto Reference:="R10C3"
ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "=TODAY()"
Range("C11").Select
End Sub

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 Macros and VBA
 Notice that the “macro” is enclosed between two lines:

sub create_text()

end sub

 Formally a macro is a subroutine to visual basic. The line

sub create_text()
tells visual basic that a subroutine named create_text is
beginning. VBA assumes that each line that follows is
part of that subroutine until it reaches the line end sub
at which point it knows the subroutine is over.

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 Macros and VBA
 Each line of the program is executed sequentially – that
is, one after the other. Let’s look at what each line does
 The first several lines (all beginning with ') are simply
comment lines that VBA ignores.

'
' create_text Macro
' Macro recorded 7/28/2003
'

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 Macros and VBA
Application.Goto Reference:="R1C1“
 This line is how the macro tells the spreadsheet to go to cell A1.
“Application.Goto” means for VBA to use the “GOTO” function
from the application – in this case from Excel (remember VBA
can be used from Word, Access, and other Office applications.)
So literally “Application.Goto” means, use the function named
“goto” embedded in this application.
 The second part of this line , Reference:=“R1C1” tells VBA to go
to row 1, column 1 (which is column “A”).
 Note that later on, when we want to go to cell C10, we use the
same line, but with Reference:”R10C3”.

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 Macros and VBA
 The “Application.” construct is important in VBA. For the
most part, you can access any of Excel’s built in functions
that way!

 The next line is:

ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = “FINN 6210 Title Page"
 This line says to make the contents of the current cell the

text which is to the right of the equal sign.

 The line that follows that is saying that after entering the

text, go down one column (the default action in Excel.)

Range("A2").Select

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 Macros and VBA
 The “Application.Goto” command is used again, this time
to go to cell c10.
Application.Goto Reference:="R10C3"

 Finally, the “today” function is inserted in cell R10C13:

ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "=TODAY()“

 Notice that the only difference between that line and the
line where we entered our text, is that instead of
entering just the text, it puts the equal signs inside of
the quote.

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 Macros and VBA
 Notice that you can easily modify your macro now that
you are in the program. For example, you could modify
the text to say “My modified title page”. Just go to the
line that says
ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = "Financial Modeling Title Page“

and replace “Financial Modeling Title Page” with “my

modified title page”.

 Similarly if you wanted to enter something other than

today’s date in the cell C10, you could replace
“=today()” with anything you wanted.

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 Macros and VBA
 Using the Macro record feature has a lot of advantages,
especially if you would like to learn the appropriate VBA
code or command, but it is of only limited use when
trying to develop more complex program – such as a
program than can take conditional actions, or that
repeat an action for a specific (or even conditional)
number of times.
 To do that, we really need to be able to create programs
without first recording them as macros.
 We will examine how to do this in the next several
sections.

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 Creating a Program
 So how do you create a program in VBA? Its relatively
easy.
 To make our example clear, shut down Excel, and then
restart it, opening a clean spreadsheet.
 Once again, click on the “Tools” menu and select
“Macro”.
 This time however, select the option on the menu
labeled “Visual Basic Editor”. This will open up a new
window (and new item on your application bar at the
bottom of you screen.)

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 Creating a Program
 This new screen – the VBA editor – is very busy and has a
lot of very useful tools on it, but for now we are largely
going to ignore them and focus on building some very
simple tools.
 To do this we first need to find a place to enter our new
program: we must create a “module” in which to store it.
 Do to this click on the “insert” menu and then click on
“module”.
 This will open up a white-screen on the right side of the
screen.
 We are now almost ready to begin, but first we have to
decide what type of program to create.

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 Subroutines vs. Functions
 As mentioned a moment ago, Macros are considered
subroutines within VBA. In actuality, however, there are
two types of programs in VBA that we will examine,
subroutines and functions.
 Subroutines are the more general of the two – they
perform any number of activities.
 Functions are more specific types of programs. They
accept a fixed number of inputs and then return a single
value back to the user. The nice thing about a function
is that you can call it from within excel in exactly the
same way that you call an Excel function – by putting
the = sign in front of the name!

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 Functions
 Because they are somewhat more limited (and also
because you are more likely to use them first), we will
begin with functions.
 Let us begin with a very simple function, one that takes
two numbers, let’s call them a and b, adds them
together and then returns them to the user. Let’s call
this function adder. Thus, once written, we will call it
from Excel entering the line:
=adder(a,b)
 Where a and b would be replaced by actual numbers.

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 Functions
 To begin with we have to tell Excel we are creating a
function and tell it the name of that function. To do this
we enter the following:

function adder(a, b)

 This says that you are creating the function adder and
that the user will supply to parameters, a and b.
 Notice that as soon as you type this in, Excel
automatically adds the line
end function

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 Functions
 All of the lines for this function must go between those
two lines.
 We are going to make the simplest possible function: on
the first line simply type:

adder = a+b

 That is it, we have completed the function. What this

says is to assign the function adder (and return to the
cell in the spreadsheet) the sum of the parameters a and
b.

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 Functions
 Go back to your main spreadsheet (click on the Excel tab
on the bottom of your screen).
 Select any cell you like, type in

=adder(5,5)

 Notice that 10 is now returned placed in the cell.

 Go to another cell, type in

=adder(12,12)
 Notice that 24 is now entered in the new cell, but 10 is

kept in the old cell.

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 Functions
 Indeed, you can notice that you can use the adder
function within excel just like you would use any Excel
function.
 For example, the Excel Function max(y,z) places in the
cell the greater of the two values y or z. Type in the
following line:

=max(10,adder(13,-2))
 The adder function evaluates to 11, and that is the max
of 10 and 11, and so it is returned.

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 Functions
 You can even have recursive calling of a function
(meaning the function can call itself):

=adder(5,adder(3,6))
Will equal 14.

 In many ways Excel will treat this as if it were a built-in

function. For example, if you click on the fx button, it
will call up all of Excel’s function. If you click on the
function type drop down menu, you will see “User
Defined” as one of your options. Click on User Defined
and you will find “adder”. Click on that and it will bring
up a function box with instructions on using adder.
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 Functions
 Of course you most likely will be doing more complex
tasks within a function.
 Let’s say that you wanted to determine the present

value of a single cash flow to be received in N years

when the interest rate is r.
 You could type in the following:

function pres_val(cf,r,n)
 Again, excel will put the “end function” line in for you.

 This says that your function will need three inputs, the

cash flow, the discount rate, and the number of periods

before you receive the cash flow.

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 Functions
 We may want to calculate an intermediate result and to
temporarily store it. We will need a variable to store
those numbers. To create a variable in a VBA program,
use the dim command. Let’s create a variable, pv_factor

Function pres_val(cf,r,n)
Dim pv_factor

End function

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 Functions
 We can now use this variable in an intermediate role
(albeit a rather silly one in this example
Function pres_val(cf,r,n)
Dim pv_factor

pv_factor = (1+r)^-n

pres_val = cf*pv_factor

End function

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 Functions
 What the program does now is clear:
1. It creates the variable pv_factor to hold the present
value factor determined by r and n.
2. It then determines the actual present value by
multiplying pv_factor by the cash flow.
3. It then returns the present value back to the calling
function or routine.

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 Functions vs. Subroutines
 For our purposes, there are very few differences
between programming a function and a subroutine.
There is one very important difference, however:
 A function cannot directly write data back to the spreadsheet, it
can only return the one value that it calcualtes.
 A subroutine can write data back to the spreadsheet whenever it
wants.

 So how does a subroutine read and write data to the

spreadsheet?
 There are actually many ways, but the easiest to use and
understand is the cells(r,c).value method.

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 Functions vs. Subroutines
 To read data directly from a spreadsheet into a variable,
use the following command:
variable = cells(row,column).value
where variable is the name of the variable, row is the
row number of the cell containing the value, and column
is the column number (not letter, you must use a
number!)
 Example: Let’s say that you wanted to read the contents of cell
b4 and to store it in the variable r. The line to do this would
read:
r = cells(4,2).value

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 Functions vs. Subroutines
 Writing data back to the spreadsheet is just as easy.
Let’s say that you have calculated a variable x that you
want to write back to cell d8. You would use the
following command to do this:
cells(8,4).value = x

 Let’s look at an example of this in an actual spreadsheet

(the spreadsheet is named “input-output example.xls”
and is on my web-site.)

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 Other Items
 We have not yet gotten into a couple of other key
issues, how to control the flow of your program, and
how to make loops.

 We will examine the “flow control.xls” spreadsheet to do

this.
 This spreadsheet has three functions embedded in it:
 Maxfinder(a,b)
 Sumcount(x)
 Fact(x)
 The purpose of these functions is to demonstrate how to
control the flow of your VBA program. Let’s look at each
of these functions.
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 Other Items
 Maxfinder(a,b)
 This function simply returns the greater of a or b. While there is
obviously a built-in excel function that can do this, I include it in this
spreadsheet because it is the simplest way to illustrate the most basic
control structure in programming: the if-then statement.
 The if-then-else statement is simply a way of telling VBA that if a
condition is true to take one set of actions, and if it is not true to take a
second set of actions.
 Generally, the format is:

If (condition is true) then

code to be executed if condition is true
which can be many lines long…
Else
code to be executed if the condition is not tru
which can also be many lines long…
Endif

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 Other Items
 Here is the code for the function MaxFinder
' A very simple use of an if-then loop.
Function MaxFinder(a, b)
Dim temp
If a > b Then
temp = a
Else
temp = b
End If
MaxFinder = temp
End Function

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 Another Example
 Finally, there is another example spreadsheet on my
web-paged named “Starting Point.xls.” This spreadsheet
contains an extremely well-documented subroutine that
will read cash flows and an interest rate from the
spreadsheet, will calculate the present value of those
cash flows, and will return that present value to the
spreadsheet.
 This subroutine uses all of the tools that we have
developed in this set of slides.

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